Collaboration of Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the Second Indochina War, with particular focus on Laos, 1952-1975

Abstract

This thesis examines the collaboration of Anglosphere allies, Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the US-led Indochina War and in particular, the Secret War in Laos 1954-1975. Though called the Vietnam War, and the American War by the opposing side, it was a regional war that affected all neighbouring countries. The war affected these Anglosphere allies too, whilst undermining their democratic institutions. The history of this collaboration has been largely ignored or denied, as the hitherto scarce literature showed. Most of the literature about the war has been written by US authors, or focuses on what the US did in promulgating the war. The actions of SEATO allies, Britain, Australia and New Zealand have been largely overlooked. This gap in the historical record needs closer examination. Three aspects of this collaboration have been selected to demonstrate its extent and depth. The thesis examines the building of the Operation Crown airfield near Leong Nok Tha and the Post Crown Works road networks in Thailand over the 1962-68 period, and the rotation of many engineer units and support services from Britain, Australia and New Zealand. This infrastructure was part of the US-led SEATO military build-up in Thailand. Crown was also used for commando incursions into Laos across the Mekong River. Participation in the SEATO alliance included staffing of the SEATO Headquarters in Bangkok; planning of an invasion, occupation and partition of Laos; and planning and participating in major SEATO exercises designed to rehearse the intended invasion. The plans also involved Britain contributing nuclear weapons. The invasion was eventually abandoned due to the divergent views, limited commitment of SEATO allies, and the US failure to consult. The study also describes Britain and Australia’s provision of counterinsurgency warfare advisers and how these individuals worked with special forces, mercenaries, and ethnic minorities to carry out covert warfare. These Anglosphere advisers also provided the US with strategic advice based on Britain’s experience in Kenya and Malaya. These counterinsurgency activities included ‘Hearts and Minds’ projects, but also the coercive removal of civilians from their traditional ancestral farming land. They set up strategic hamlets and refugee camps, destroyed food, crops, domestic animals, homes and property, and carried out the interrogation of prisoners. Eventually, advisers from Britain and Australia joined the leadership of the Phoenix Program, which assassinated 20,000 to 30,000 suspected communist sympathisers in South Việt Nam. The third aspect of Anglosphere involvement in the war detailed here is the process of invention and development, and eventually manufacture of defoliants – including Agent Orange – that were of great importance to counterinsurgency warfare. The destruction of food crops was as central to the US Ranch Hand program as the removal of forest canopy to reveal the disposition of their ii adversaries. Defoliants were used to coerce civilians to vacate their homes and farms, turning these areas into free-fire zones. The toxicity and teratogenic nature of these chemicals caused aborted foetuses and unviable deformed babies. Eventually, the US government was obliged to phase out defoliant use, beginning with the immediate ending of crop destruction in 1971. The British, Australian and New Zealand contributions to the war were a whole of government undertaking. There were connections between the ‘big’ conventional war that included massive bombing and invasion plans, as well as the ‘small’ covert unconventional guerrilla counterinsurgency wars in Laos and throughout Indochina that were part of the regional war of resistance to decolonisation. The war, predicated on the fears of the Domino Theory, ended with none of the predicted outcomes. The foreign forces withdrew and the local nationalist-communist victors in Laos, Cambodia, and Việt Nam set about reconstruction with varying degrees of success and largely without assistance from the Anglosphere countries which had invested so heavily in the war. US forces left Thailand in 1975-76 at the request of Thai authorities. SEATO was disbanded in 1977. Australia’s forward defence doctrine was quietly forgotten.